A commonly used type of electrical harness comprises a multi-contact electrical connector having a plurality of terminals therein in side-by-side spaced-apart relationship. Wires are connected to the terminals in the connector and extend therefrom and may or may not have terminals crimped onto their other ends, that is the free ends of the wires. Usually, the terminals in the connector are of the type which have wire-receiving slots so that the wires can be connected to the terminals by merely inserting the wire ends into the slots in the terminals.
Harnesses of the type described above are ordinarily produced by machines of the general type shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,440. Machines of this type have a wire insertion station at which all of the wires required for the connector are simultaneously inserted into the wire-receiving slots of the terminals in the connector. The wires may be fed by means of a shuttle which is movable towards the insertion station. In one type of machine, the shuttle pulls the wires from endless sources such as reels and delivers the ends to the insertion station at which they are connected to the terminals. The wires are then cut and may be stripped of their insulation if desired. Machines of this type usually do not have provision for crimping terminals onto the free ends of the wires and if terminals are required, the crimping operation is carried out in separate manufacturing steps.
Machines of the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,440 and similar machines are in general highly satisfactory and are widely used in the electrical industry. They are, however, specialized machines and cannot be used for any purpose other then producing harnesses of the type being considered here. Therefore, a manufacturer requiring harnesses of the type under consideration must require a very large number of such harnesses to justify the purchase of a machine of the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,440 or a similar machine. Furthermore, and as pointed out above, machines of this type do not have a means for connecting terminals to the free ends of the wires and if such an operation is required, an additional machine must be obtained to carry out the crimping operations.
The present invention is directed to the achievement of a method and apparatus for producing harnesses of the type described above which does not require specialized harness making machines as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,440 but which can be carried out with any one of a number of known types of wire processing machines which are also capable of other manufacturing operations. The invention is further directed to the achievement of a method and apparatus which permits crimping of terminals onto the free ends of the wires.